The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-01-29
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

The favorite poet of New England is ar
old man now. Friday, Dec IL, he was
seventy-nine. His health, never very
robust. has gradually been failing fol
several years, and he goes out but little
now in this wintry weather; yet he has
managed not only to maintain his inter
est in literary affairs and the public
questions of the day, but even to con-
tinue to some extent his own literary
work.
Everybody will join in the hope that he
may long be spared to charm the public
with his sweet and pure songs of love and
religious trust; but in the natural course
Of things Mr.. Whittier must be expected
soon to leave us. His age, now consider
ably past the life term allotted by the
Psalmist, would reach, in one more jour.
ney round the sun, the full term of three
score and twenty. He is bachelor
and it has always seemed as if he had
somehow missed one important side OF
life, in living alone. He doubtless has
felt it to be SO, himself. Mr.. Whittier is
naturally one who would be among the
last to shun the life of the domestic
affections; and it is revealing no secret
to say that his lonely bachelor life has
been due to an early disappointment in
an affair of the heart. He loved too sin
cerely to be able, at any after time, to
transfer the heart he had thus in the
morning of his years SO unavailingly
placed on the altar of his first and only
love.
His poetry is marked by simple direct
ness, natural melody, and a singularly
sweet spirit. In this latter respect no one
has surpassed him.
In his JOY of nature, and the blishe life
of summer among his New England hills,
his early love and poetical sense OF such
scenery of earth and sky never has for
saken him, even in old age. A poem,
entitled ga Summer Pilrimage," written
rather late in life, while it is permeated
with his characteristic religious senti-
ment, still shows him in what is most
undoubtedly his most characteristic
phase as a poet. He is telling of that
yearning for the woods and mountains
which all such natures as his must feel
when the heats of the ardent Northern
summer so fiercely press this urgent in
vitation to go:
"Still, when the sun of summer burns.
My longing for the hills returns;
And northward, leaving at my back
The warm vale of the Merrimac,
go to meet the winds of morn,
Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born,
Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy
The hunger of lowland eye."
But now in his gray old age, when the
winter of the natural year SO fifty typifies
the winter of his life, into which he has
SO fully entered, how completely does his
own sweet and exalted verse on the great
coming change apply to him? 1t is SO
good that it is worth quoting here:
AT LAST.
When on my day of life the night is falling,
And in the winds from unsunned spaces
blown,
hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown.
Thou who hast made my home of life so
pleasant,
Leave DOT it's tenant when its walls decayl
o Love divine, o Helper ever present,
Be thou my strength and stayl
Be near me when all else is from me drifting,
Earth, sky, homes pictures, days of shade
and shine.
And kindly faces on my own uplifting
The love which answers mine.
1 have but Thee, o Fatherl Let thy spirit
Be with me then to comfort and uphold;
No gate of pearl, no branch of palm, merit,
Nor street of shining gold.
Suffice it if-my good and i'll unreckoned.
And both forgiven through thy Astounding
grace